Posted 4 February 2007
Had a trouble free trip out here, but not overly impressed by the service of Iberia and certainly not LAN Chile, who hostesses were never seen in between the two meals they served, a bit much for a 14 hour flight with not even a drink of water or fruit juice. At least offered that even though you had to pay a la Ryan Air. Never the less we arrived on time and found an ATM at the airport and caught a bus to the centre and made the rest of the way to the hotel by taxi, on the meter but of course that didn´t stop him taking an overly long route using a policy of homing in by ever decreasing circles.
Hotel Galerias booked via ebookers was good though very unimpressive when viewed from the street. Internally it was built as a modern courtyard design with many floors, each of four sides. The rooms, presumably almost identical, were large and comfortable. We chose this hotel because it was the fifth most popular on tripadvisor.com, which again served as an excellent means of sifting. Buffet breakfast was good with a lot of different fresh summer fruit as well as all the normal European fare. At this time of year it seemed their trade was mostly with tour parties. After the two nights pre-booked we changed to the nearby Paris Hotel for half the price so as to try out the variety and get our bearing costwise.
The currency is easy as there are just over 1000 pesos to the pound. So I will work in thousands and describe prices in thousand, ie 100K can be read as 100 pounds but 100pe (pe for pesos will be just 10p British). Thus Galerias was 43K and Paris was 18K (the most expensive room) but without breakfast.
The most impressive feature of Santiago has been the weather. We arrived to cloudless blue sky and very good visibility, and that continued for the three days we spent here. The evenings are very pleasant, it´s light until 9 pm and the streets are full in the cool of the evening. Some of the streets are pedestrian only. We could not help but smile last night as we walked down one of the precincts last night looking with everyone else at the goods laid out carefully on the floor, mainly pirated DVDs CDs and posters, and the street acts. Suddenly the street ahead was clear and we wondered why. The reason was not long coming in the form of a small police car slowly wending its way through the crowd, twenty yards behind it the pavements were back in action as if nothing had occurred, well it hadn´t had it.
For this trip we are using the Footprints guide, which we found to extremely good for Andalucia last spring. So far we have more or less followed their choice of restaurants. The best three by far have been El Naturista which is a truly excellent vegetarian restaurant, but unfortunately was closed Saturday and Sunday, Bar National 2 which was hectic at lunch time with a full choice of good meals on their menu, but perhaps the biggest shock was the Mercato Central, about the size of Swansea market, at least fifty percent of which was given over to packed open plan fish restaurant areas, the rest to selling raw fish and meat. In the centre of the market they were quite professional looking, but before spotting this area we sat down in an ordinary popular area more like asian food markets. There Joan had Chupe de Mariscos and I had a huge serving of Reinette, which the guide describes as a sort of Bream, and we shared a two litre bottle of beer all for 7K.
As for drinks we now realise that for all their excellence of their wine produce the people still drink beer, hurrah, and it´s not at all bad. Joan has discovered Borgona, this is not a copy of red burgundy but white wine with fruit juice, a sort of alcopops served by the glass or at 5K for a large jar. A theme like the Vino de Verano in Andalucia but better. Draught beer by the way is Schop(a) which descibes the pint pulling motion (and applies also to Mr Whippy type ice cream), I presume Schop comes from German. Today having taken a funicular to the top of a mountain overlooking the city we disciovered that everyone was drinking Mote con Huesillo in a litre glass a quarter full of soft wheat and two whole peaches and filled with a peach juice. I presume this is a specialty of the venue, or the virgin Mary who looks approvingly on from her perch on top of the hill.
Had a trouble free trip out here, but not overly impressed by the service of Iberia and certainly not LAN Chile, who hostesses were never seen in between the two meals they served, a bit much for a 14 hour flight with not even a drink of water or fruit juice. At least offered that even though you had to pay a la Ryan Air. Never the less we arrived on time and found an ATM at the airport and caught a bus to the centre and made the rest of the way to the hotel by taxi, on the meter but of course that didn´t stop him taking an overly long route using a policy of homing in by ever decreasing circles.
Hotel Galerias booked via ebookers was good though very unimpressive when viewed from the street. Internally it was built as a modern courtyard design with many floors, each of four sides. The rooms, presumably almost identical, were large and comfortable. We chose this hotel because it was the fifth most popular on tripadvisor.com, which again served as an excellent means of sifting. Buffet breakfast was good with a lot of different fresh summer fruit as well as all the normal European fare. At this time of year it seemed their trade was mostly with tour parties. After the two nights pre-booked we changed to the nearby Paris Hotel for half the price so as to try out the variety and get our bearing costwise.
The currency is easy as there are just over 1000 pesos to the pound. So I will work in thousands and describe prices in thousand, ie 100K can be read as 100 pounds but 100pe (pe for pesos will be just 10p British). Thus Galerias was 43K and Paris was 18K (the most expensive room) but without breakfast.
The most impressive feature of Santiago has been the weather. We arrived to cloudless blue sky and very good visibility, and that continued for the three days we spent here. The evenings are very pleasant, it´s light until 9 pm and the streets are full in the cool of the evening. Some of the streets are pedestrian only. We could not help but smile last night as we walked down one of the precincts last night looking with everyone else at the goods laid out carefully on the floor, mainly pirated DVDs CDs and posters, and the street acts. Suddenly the street ahead was clear and we wondered why. The reason was not long coming in the form of a small police car slowly wending its way through the crowd, twenty yards behind it the pavements were back in action as if nothing had occurred, well it hadn´t had it.
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| SPARKLING UNDERGROUND |
As for drinks we now realise that for all their excellence of their wine produce the people still drink beer, hurrah, and it´s not at all bad. Joan has discovered Borgona, this is not a copy of red burgundy but white wine with fruit juice, a sort of alcopops served by the glass or at 5K for a large jar. A theme like the Vino de Verano in Andalucia but better. Draught beer by the way is Schop(a) which descibes the pint pulling motion (and applies also to Mr Whippy type ice cream), I presume Schop comes from German. Today having taken a funicular to the top of a mountain overlooking the city we disciovered that everyone was drinking Mote con Huesillo in a litre glass a quarter full of soft wheat and two whole peaches and filled with a peach juice. I presume this is a specialty of the venue, or the virgin Mary who looks approvingly on from her perch on top of the hill.
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